On the eve of the world’s biggest classical music festival, Ivan Hewett
explains why the BBC Proms thrives despite all its oddities and accusations
of dumbing down.

Friday it begins all over again – the tremendous eight-week, non-stop pageant of great music and innocent fun that is the Proms. And it’s the fun bit that once again is bothering some seasoned Prom-watchers. There are dark mutterings that the Proms isn’t as serious as it was, that the Proms in the Parks events and the Comedy Prom and the Horrible Histories Proms are hogging the limelight, and the serious events are being overshadowed.

It’s fascinating to see how a series of orchestral concerts has become a focus for all our anxieties about culture. No season is complete now without its ritual accusations of dumbing down.

In the 2007 Proms season, the show-tunes evening with Michael Ball was the focus of the outrage. In 2008, it was the Dr Who Prom, the same year that Culture Secretary Margaret Hodge declared that the Proms were insufficiently “inclusive”, and was promptly slapped down by Gordon Brown. This year, it’s the Comedy Prom with Tim Minchin.

The worry seems to be that all these populist events – the Proms in the Park, the film-music Proms, the sing-and-play-along Proms Plus events – are distractions from the core classical events. But that’s as much the fault of the media as the Proms.

The director Roger Wright does not bang on endlessly about Proms in the Park and John Wilson’s Hooray for Hollywood Prom. He’s just as keen to tell you that this year’s season includes a complete Brahms symphony cycle, some unusually scored concertos, 11 premieres, and a focus on that fine but still neglected British composer Frank Bridge.

But Bridge and Brahms don’t make good headlines, whereas Tim Minchin’s comedy Prom does. There’s an insidious temptation to seize on that, and then work oneself into a spurious lather of indignation about how comedians are pushing proper classical music out of the picture.

Nevertheless, when due allowance has been made for fake media outrage, it has to be admitted that the populist side of the Proms has swelled hugely in recent years. Some regard this as sinister evidence that the BBC senior management and governors are worried that the Proms appears elitist. No doubt there’s some truth in this.

But let’s not forget the pressures tending the other way. The fall-out from the Russell Brand/Jonathan Ross scandal, the misrepresentation of the Queen, the vote-rigging on Blue Peter, accusations of profligacy in everything from presenters’ fees to buildings – all this has had the effect of focusing minds, both within the BBC and without, on reasserting the BBC’s core values. It’s no accident that, when he was recently asked to define the BBC’s role, director-general Mark Thompson reached for the hallowed formula originally enunciated by Lord Reith: to inform, educate and entertain.

It’s hard to think of any BBC enterprise that embodies that formula so perfectly as the Proms, so my hunch is that the Proms are actually more secure now than they have been for years. You could almost say that, if the Proms didn’t exist, the BBC would have to invent them.

Look at the Proms programmes and you’ll see the old mission to lead people on from the familiar to the more challenging is still there. The difference is that now the top-down ethos can’t be openly admitted: it has to be tucked away under some eye-catching fun. Only the Proms’ long history allows it to pull off the improbable feat of hiding an improving mission under a populist disguise.

That history has created a complex identity, in which stubborn idealism, commercial pressures and arguments over national identity are blended in surprising ways. This is the root of its potent appeal and the stubborn loyalty it inspires.

Some ideologues think the Proms should be reshaped from scratch. Throw out those outmoded orchestras, they suggest, and create an eight-week jamboree that more truly represents the diverse nature of contemporary Britain.

People who advocate this fondly imagine that this would instantly recreate the spirit of the Proms, but in a much more “inclusive” way.This is pure fantasy. Such a festival would no doubt throw up all kinds of interesting and exciting things, but it would inevitably be a lot less than the sum of its parts because it would do no more than reflect Britain as it is, ie a collection of sub-cultures, all jostling for attention. It would lack the very thing that makes the Proms special – the ability to represent, in music, an imagined community.

So let’s embrace the Proms. For all its imperfections and occasional annoyances, it is still a thing of wonder. And as well as giving a lot of pleasure, it fulfils a deep cultural need in a way that few other things can match.